Every friend group I’ve had has ended with me not feeling like I fit in with them.
It’s great for a few months, even years once, but ultimately I end up noticing that I don’t have things in common with my friends or I just don’t mesh well with them.
The group I’m in now I thought was perfect. Two of the girls I’ve known since kindergarten and we were previously friends. So it seemed like the perfect situation.
Unfortunately, I’m once again reaching a point where I’m realizing I don’t belong, except this time it feels much worse.
I’ve realized that I am the only one who doesn’t have a strong connection with any one of my friends. They all are close friends with one another. I’m not. They talk to each other one on one all the time. I don’t. They hang out without the other friends. I don’t.
And the other girl in the group is also sort of an outcast but she has another whole friend group to hang out with and she is in a relationship.
So I’m literally the outcast. The extra friend. The fourth wheel in most situations.
A prime example of this happened the other day. A few months ago my friends and I took some fun graduation pictures. We had a mini photo shoot and got a lot of great pictures of the three of us. A week before graduation, one of my friends posted a “1 week til graduation” post on insta. The picture however was only of the two girls I took the picture of. I was not in the photo. We had dozens of pictures of us together, she chose the one without me. Even worse, when I saw their phones they each had that picture as their background. How else am I supposed to take that except that I’m obviously not first pick for either of them?
That was the moment I realized how unimportant I am to them. The moment I realized I didn’t fit happened the other day.
It was one of my friends 18th birthday and she wanted to go to a hotel and have a night out on the city. So I dressed up and was super excited to have what I thought was going to be like an “adult” night, since we all would be legal adults. Well that didn’t happen. Instead they wanted to stay in the hotel room and do silly things like gossip about boys and make Tik Toks. Neither of which are my thing. So what did I do the entire night? I played on my phone, watched Netflix. Then they decided they wanted to go play in the pool. Yes play. They wanted to PLAY in the pool. Nobody told me to bring a swimsuit so what did I do for two hours while they swam? I played on my phone.
I’m 18 years old, almost 19. While that doesn’t mean I HAVE to be mature, I am. I have lost interest in pretending to be a child. I’m all about silliness and being dorks, but that’s different than immaturity.
But this whole situation has got me worried that I will never be able to find friends I mesh with. People like when others are fun right? I’m not fun. I’d rather have an intellectual conversation about cultures and politics than gossip about boys and celebrities. Am I ever going to find people who understand that? Am I ever going to find friends who I am happy to be with?